Piranesi

Architecture is central to the novel, starting with the title (and one of the names of the narrator). Giovanni Battista Piranesi created the Carceri d’invenzione, or Imaginary Prisons, etchings in the early 1700s. These prints have many features that are seen in Clarke’s novel: arches, staircases, and, of course, statues. Piranesi’s prints are inspired by Roman buildings and Clarke’s labyrinth is an “infinite series of classical buildings knitted together” (178). 

While the Italian artist’s prints include one titled “Arch with a Shell Ornament,” Clarke generally introduces a sea that isn’t originally present in the Carceri: her labyrinth is submerged in varying degrees throughout the novel. The watery halls of Piranesi’s House lead to unique architectural blending between natural and statuesque elements, such as “a Woman crowned with coral, her Hands transformed into stars or flowers. There are Figures horned with coral, or crucified on coral branches, or stuck through with coral arrows” (227) and a “Staircase that had become one vast bed of mussels” (55).

The tension between carefully crafted architectural structures and wild nature is the crux of this theme. The narrator believes that “The House is valuable because it is the House” (60) and “the Statue is superior to the thing itself, the Statue being perfect, eternal and not subject to decay” (222).